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June 29, 2017

From the bestselling horror author of Within These Walls and
The Bird Eater comes a brand-new novel of terror that follows a teenager
determined to break from his family’s unconventional—and deeply
disturbing—traditions.

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse
miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it’s served them well
so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don’t knock
on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing as to what’s buried in the
Morrows’ backyard.

But nineteen-year-old Michael Morrow isn’t like the rest of
his family. He doesn’t take pleasure in the screams that echo through the
trees. Michael pines for normalcy, and he’s sure that someday he’ll see the world
beyond West Virginia. When he meets Alice, a pretty girl working at a record
shop in the small nearby town of Dahlia, he’s immediately smitten. For a
moment, he nearly forgets about the monster he’s become. But his brother,
Rebel, is all too eager to remind Michael of his place…

‘Brother’ is . . . a very brutal book to say the least.
There is a lot of blood, a lot of cringing, and a lot of having to put it down
to take a break. It follows the traditions of the Morrow family as they make
their way through girls. By making their way through girls, I mean brutally
murdering them.

This book is not for people who don’t enjoy gore. There is a
lot of it, and some of it is really hard to read. If you can get through that,
you will find an interesting story about a kid that longs for normalcy when his
life is anything but normal.

You get the sense that Michael may not be all there, but it
could just be his lack of education and communication with the outside world.
All he knows is the messed up family that he has ended up with. He knows he
doesn’t really belong in their circle, but it takes him the whole book to find
out his actual truth.

Michael is a complex character while being a very simple
person. For someone who has done unforgivable things, Michael has a good heart
and feels very deeply.

Then there is Reb, Michael’s “brother”. I am not sure he has
felt any emotion except for anger. Despite being a sibling, I feel like he ran
the family. It lived and breathed on the back of Reb.

Wade was the father, but he was much more of a background
character and didn’t really mean anything to me.

Momma – she got the family started in their messed up ways.
Everything they did was to please her. She was an ominous presence that
couldn’t really do much on her own. She did a lot of . . . cooking. She had a
severe lust for blood and she wanted to see people suffer. For a character who
doesn’t say a whole lot, she was terrifying.

Misty Dawn was the reject of the family due to her loneliness
and need for love.

Brother is told from Michael’s POV and introduces you to his
struggles and want for a new life.

It is a deep book, and it is well written. Despite the
gruesome scenes, it made me want to keep reading.

If you can handle it, give it a shot.

3/5 Stars

Memorable Quotes:

“Them’s the perks of livin’ out in the wilderness, Momma has
once said. You scream and ain’t nobody around to hear.”

“If it didn’t matter how hard they screamed, Michael didn’t
get what the difference would be. Day or night, dead was dead. At least during
the day he wasn’t trying to sleep.”

“Some hurts were just too painful to talk about.”

“The air was always better when the world was sleeping. It
made it easier to breathe.”

“She was his Fate, delivering him from a life of horror,
saving him from himself.”

Zoe knows that it wasn’t really her fault. Of course it
wasn’t. But if she’d just grasped harder, run faster, lunged quicker, she might
have saved him. And Edward doesn’t really blame her, though his bitter words at
the time still haunt her, and he can no more take them back than she can halt
the car that killed their son.

Two years on, every day is a tragedy. Edward knows they
should take healing steps together, but he’s tired of being shut out. For Zoe,
it just seems easier to let grief lead the way.

A weekend in Paris might be their last hope for
reconciliation, but mischance sees them separated before they’ve even left Gare
du Nord. Lost and alone, Edward and Zoe must try to find their way back to each
other—and find their way back to the people they were before. But is that even
possible?

I will classify this book as frustratingly intriguing. It is
told in the POV of two different people and you kind of want to smack both of
them at different times. Then you have to remember that they are both suffering
from an inconceivable loss, and you start to understand them a little more.

At the beginning, the story was a lot more frustrating, but
as the characters get a little more in depth, you start rooting for both of
them and the book becomes a lot better.

Who We Were Before was really well written in my mind. It
jumped from character to character, time period to time period, yet you are
still able to keep up really well. The use of different time periods and
different POVs creates more depth for the characters than you would get without
it. Zoe and Edward are both, somehow,
really likable characters. Yes, I know I said earlier that you want to smack
them. Tough love?

You meet Zoe as a spaced out, grieving mother who wants
nothing to do with the life she leads due to the loss of her son. She is stuck
inside of her own mind, and no one is going to break her out. You get a taste
of who she was before and who she could be through the flashback chapters. It
gives her an added charm that is very necessary due to the lost soul she has
become.

You meet Edward as a man who is fed up with his wife and who
she has become. He wants the woman that he married back, but doesn’t try to
understand where she has gone. Instead he turns away from her and into the arms
of someone else. . . almost.

You want them to find each other and get their love back,
but they are both hiding so many secrets, you have to wonder if they can ever
get it back.

I got this book very cheap on Amazon, it may have been one
of the free KindleFirst books, but I can’t recall. I will say, I am glad that I
took a chance on it. I enjoyed reading it late at night while lying in bed. It
was a nice way to unwind from the day and get lost in someone else’s story. It
moved a long nicely and never really became boring. It took me awhile to get
through, but that is because I would only read a little at a time before bed.
If you get lost in it, you could easily knock it out in one day.

If you are looking for your next weekend or afternoon read,
I would highly recommend this one. It is quick, easy, and an overall nice book.
Give it a shot.

3.5/5 stars

Memorable Quotes:

“They look about mid-twenties, still young enough to believe
nothing can go wrong, I wonder what they think of Edward and me?”

“Love your son. Have a huge, gaping hole in your life, a
kick in the stomach each morning you wake up, and a pain that leaves you
struggling to breathe. That’s how you get like that. Like us.”

“If I could, I’d stay here in this spot, with her, forever.”

“The yarn was connected to my heart, entwining emotions into
every row.”

“The metro rattles into a station, and together we watch the
doors open and close as passengers get off and more get on. The rhythm of life,
I think absently. One minute the people you love are there, the next they’re
gone.”